


Follow the Pale Moonlight

by leporidae



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Animal Transformation, Curses, Dimilix Holiday Exchange 2019, Gen, M/M, Mild Blood, Snippets, Unresolved Tension, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21914536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leporidae/pseuds/leporidae
Summary: "You think I’d be scared of some Demonic Beast?” Felix puffs out his chest. “I could take it. It would be afraid ofme.”Dimitri’s face falls. “Do you really believe the rumors, Felix?”
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 3
Kudos: 74
Collections: 2019 Dimilix Holiday Exchange





	Follow the Pale Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lumeha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumeha/gifts).



> My fic for the [Dimilix Exchange!](https://twitter.com/DimilixExchange) It was for Ash who had some kind of werewolf (/lion/boar/beast/etc.) Dimitri as a prompt. I hope you enjoy your, uh, abomination Dimitri I have created. It was a lot of fun to write too. 
> 
> (And happy holidays, of course.)

_Why can’t I go outside? It’s boring in the castle._

_It’s dangerous in Fhirdiad after dark, Felix. The reports of Demonic Beast attacks have become too frequent to ignore._

_That’s not fair. I could take a Demonic Beast singlehanded — with just my sword. They don’t scare me._

_You’ll get yourself killed, Felix._

No, he won’t. He’s going to prove to his father that he’s not afraid of anything. Felix doesn’t need Glenn or Dimitri protecting him to face danger, doesn’t need Ingrid to hide behind or Sylvain to wipe away his tears.

Felix waits for Rodrigue to fall asleep, and he slips away.

* * *

“Felix!” His best friend’s eyes sparkle as he runs across the courtyard to greet Felix. Dimitri’s hair bounces with each eager step, and he reaches Felix breathlessly, pulling him into a hug. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

While in the embrace Felix grins, knowing that Dimitri cannot see his face. By the time Dimitri pulls back, he has reverted to his petulant scowl. “Why not? You think I’d be scared of some Demonic Beast?” Felix puffs out his chest. “I could take it. It would be afraid of _me.”_

Dimitri’s face falls. “Do you really believe the rumors, Felix?”

_(“Now, Felix,” Rodrigue had said, “if I bring you to Castle Fhirdiad with me, you have to promise you won’t go outside after dark.”_

_Felix pouted. “There’s nothing scary about the dark. I’m not a child anymore.”_

_“It’s not the dark I’m worried about,” Rodrigue said. “It’s the increasing reports of missing or injured people. All of them were attacked at night, and all of them described a creature as the perpetrator. People are even starting to call it the “Beast of Fhirdiad.” It’s a serious situation, Felix. Until the threat is vanquished, it’s not safe for anyone to go outside after dark, child or not.”)_

Felix scoffs. “I don’t care about some beast. I’m going to be the greatest swordsman ever. I’ll cut any beast down myself.”

“Oh, um.” Dimitri smiles nervously. “You’re very brave, Felix.”

“You think I can’t do it!” Felix accuses. “I can tell. You don’t think I’m strong enough, do you, Dimitri?”

“Ah, no, it’s not —”

“I bet you think _Glenn_ could take down the beast,” Felix says, blinking frustrated tears from the corners of his eyes. “You’ve always thought Glenn was stronger than me.”

“That’s not — ”

“I’ll show you,” Felix growls. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

He ignores the hurt on Dimitri’s face when he stomps back to his father’s side.

* * *

That night the air is frigid, swirling around him and buffeting his cloak. Felix shudders and grits his teeth, boots crunching softly atop winter’s first layer of frost. Armed with only a dagger, it had been easy to sneak past the night guards and slip outside into the castle garden. From there Felix had simply climbed the gate, escaping into the forest with one hand clenched around the dagger’s hilt and the other holding his hood in place as the icy wind lashes his cheeks, relentless.

Each rustle in the underbrush makes him jump — not because he’s _scared,_ of course, merely _alert._

The first snarl hardly registers in Felix’s mind, perhaps belonging to a wolf hunting its prey under the light of the moon, much like himself. The second, louder, stops him in his tracks for a beat. But Felix pushes forward, hand sweaty around the blade of the dagger held before him like a compass to direct him to the heart of the beast he wishes to slay.

Another noise, a strangled human cry. A snarl, a scuffle.

Felix shakes from anticipation. Not fear, never fear.

Metallic and cold, the stench of blood hits him then, and Felix swallows down the bitterness. The beast had clearly claimed yet another victim. He can hear it panting in the underbrush just beyond the cluster of bushes.

 _What if someone’s dead?_ Felix wonders, and then he realizes he’s never actually seen a dead human before, just heard about them in books and secondhand from his father's stories and Glenn’s knight training.

He swallows.

 _You can still turn back if you’re scared._ This time it’s Glenn’s condescending voice Felix hears in his mind, and the message has the opposite effect, pushing him forward through the tangle of leaves.

Crouched in the clearing is a creature like nothing Felix has ever seen.

It's furred like a dog or bear, but definitely neither of those; teeth jut from its jaw jagged, almost like boar tusks, and its wide shoulders are incongruous with its lithe and almost whip-like tail. It crouches hunched on four paws almost painfully, as if its body is too large to contain its life force. Black curved claws dig into the frozen dirt and snow, glistening in the flashes of moonlight, and to the side on a nearby tree, a splatter of blood and mess of broken branches reveals the shimmer’s source. Whoever had been mauled had clearly fled in a frenzied panic, pushing aside the foliage with wild abandon to make their escape. If the beast had been hunting, Felix wonders, why had it not gone after its prey?

A leaf crunches under the toe of his boot, and the beast turns to glare at him with haunted eyes.

Those eyes don’t fit a beast, Felix thinks. They are mismatched as the rest of its parts, but worse, because there’s something — something horrifyingly _sentient_ behind that sinister gaze, something looking straight through him, something _begging._ And for what? Felix’s flesh, or to be put out of its misery?

Felix takes a step back. A simple animal he could kill without a second thought. It would be just like hunting. But this — no, he can’t kill _this._ He can’t even bear to _look_ at this. He has to get away, to run back to his quarters and sneak under the covers and pretend like this never happened. And he _certainly_ won’t tell his father about his. Not ever.

“F…elix?”

The voice is ragged. Felix freezes, praying to the Goddess — truly and genuinely, for the first time in his life — that he had imagined it, because there’s no one else in the clearing but himself and the beast, and that voice, the one belonging to his friend, has no place here. Perhaps it’s possible that Dimitri is the one who had been injured, Felix thinks desperately, and his gravelly plea resides behind the bushes, behind the tree trunk streaked with blood —

“Don’t… look.”

_It’s him._

_The beast, it’s_ — _!_

Felix runs.

Nothing pursues him through the undergrowth as he stumbles over his own feet, the thorns of foliage hastily shoved aside slapping at his face and stinging his eyes with tears. Even if the beast comes after him, Felix is sure he wouldn’t be able to hear anything over the painful thrumming of his heartbeat in his ears. The howling wind is too frigid and his chest, heaving with shuddered breaths, too painful for any of this to be a nightmare.

 _You’re very brave, Felix,_ Dimitri had said, and the words plague him now, echoing through Felix’s memories in that clear, princely voice of his. The words of his friend, not the ragged, anguished heavings of a monster.

For once, he wishes he had listened to his father.

_(“Felix, you’re crying,” Rodrigue says when he finds his son curled up under the covers of his bed the following dawn, chest heaving with wracking sobs. “Did you have a nightmare?”_

* * *

Every day at Garreg Mach is torture.

Every day Felix walks into the Professor’s lectures and sees _him_ sitting there, blithely smiling at the rest of the Blue Lions as though everything is normal. As though _he’s_ normal.

Every day Dimitri holds a lance in his hands and crosses blades with his classmates in training; every day Dimitri goes to the dining hall and eats normal meals alongside laughing students and returns to his room at night and slumbers under the sheets of his bed like the rest of them.

(At least, Felix assumes so. What Dimitri does at night, really — well, he doesn’t want to know.)

Every day he chides Sylvain and discusses tactics with Ingrid.

Every day he waves to Felix in the classroom.

Felix ignores him, every day.

* * *

“This is fortunate, isn’t it?” Dimitri says with a grunt, lifting a boulder of rubble over his shoulder, effortless as a lion tossing aside a dead rabbit. “That the Professor assigned us to cleaning duty together. We haven’t had much time to speak to one another since coming to the Officers Academy.”

That smile, so polite, the very picture of a prince. Utterly fake.

Felix might be sick.

“There’s nothing _fortunate_ about this,” Felix snarls. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know what’s wrong with you. Don’t look away from the truth with those self-serving eyes of yours, and _don’t_ talk to me like we’re still friends.”

The rest of the activity is spent in icy silence.

_(“Professor, I think it may be counterproductive to pair me with Felix in the future. The two of us, ah… are not certain how to work with one another at the moment.”)_

* * *

“All this time,” Felix spits, “you knew? You _knew,_ and you’ve supported that beast anyway?”

Dedue stares back at him, unflinching. “I have known. And I have chosen to stand by His Highness’s side nonetheless.”

“He’s been hurting people —” Felix’s voice cracks, hysterical. This would almost be laughable if it wasn’t so horrible. “Like an animal. He has no control over his behavior — _this_ is the savior king you choose to follow to your early grave, Dedue? This man with snarling, dripping fangs in place of human teeth, claws under those metal gauntlets of his?”

“It is,” Dedue says, so hollow — so infuriating! “Are you afraid of him, Felix?”

_I’m not afraid of anything —_

“I’m done speaking of this to you,” Felix snaps. “Clearly you’ve been infected by his disease. You, like your _liege,_ speak as though you are entirely addled.”

Why now, of all times, must Felix resist the urge to cry?

* * *

The man who launches himself at Edelgard, spear brandished with killing intent towards her heart — that man, somehow, is still human. A wild man, sure, but a human one; the flash of his manic grin reveals human teeth, his icy eyes flashing with righteous fury. His classmates are scared, but to them, he is still intact.

But when Garreg Mach falls to battle, Dimitri becomes _that thing_ again. His fangs drip with the blood of other Demonic Beasts whose rage burns indistinguishable from his own, his claws curled, his hackles prickling.

The Prince himself, well — he is conveniently _missing_ in the chaos of blossoming war.

The Empire’s Demonic Beasts, forlorn with their twisted masks and unearthly moans, surround the creature that is Dimitri on every side, slashing through his hide with poisoned claws, and Dimitri snarls back, baring his unnatural fangs. Felix watches with mesmerized horror, glove gripped tightly around the hilt of his sword hanging uselessly at his side; under the leather he can feel his palms slick with sweat.

Everyone else is too preoccupied with staying alive to notice the clash unfolding before them, and even if they did, why would they rush in to assist a monster fighting other monsters? Best to just let them tear each other to bits, is it not?

Felix’s fingers twitch. He should help Dimitri.

Even if he’s the only one who knows — he should help.

And yet —

With the swing of one massive limb and a roar, Dimitri bludgeons aside the creature with claws sunk in his flesh, ripping out his own fur and blood along with it. The Demonic Beast’s neck snaps with a loud, oddly hollow _crack_ , and Felix shivers.

Dimitri seems to be managing fine on his own.

Those blue eyes swivel, sensing Felix, and the fighting melts away around them as they stare at one another.

Felix backs away into the fray.

* * *

He returns to Garreg Mach a human. Briefly human, but still human nonetheless.

But once the other students have left him be, Prince Dimitri the beast paces the cathedral halls, ever the wounded animal. No one watches, too scared to approach him, so once again Felix is the only person to see him slink through the rubble, furred cape morphing into real raised hackles as he drops to all four.

Felix watches him with apathy. As a child, seeing Dimitri in this state had haunted him. These days, in the midst of war, Felix has seen _real_ haunting things: the slaughter of nations, the destruction of families, the delusions of the masses praising violence as heroism. Now Dimitri is just one beast of many; his curse does not make him special.

A growl rumbles from the front of the cathedral as Dimitri senses him — or perhaps smells him. Felix’s lip curls as the prince’s furred head jerks to the side to watch him, icy blue eyes the only remaining vestiges of the man’s human form.

“Mongrel,” Felix sneers. The growl deepens. Felix laughs.

Dimitri prowls forward, shoulders hunched, and Felix’s hand falls to his side, ready to unsheathe his sword if need be. It certainly would validate him, he thinks, if the man lunged forward and attacked. Instead, against all odds, Dimitri lays down with a whine, tail wrapping submissively around his haunches. Felix cringes at the pathetic display, at the helpless resignation in the animal’s eyes, unbefitting a future king — unbefitting even a _human_ with any pride. Bile rises in his throat, but he does not run. Instead he lowers himself to the floor, unable to stand tall while Dimitri is cowering. He crosses his legs one over the other and waits, fingers still ghosting over the hilt of his blade.

Dimitri slowly slinks forward, the very image of a skittish dog despite all his abhorrent, undefinable animal parts. Felix, on edge, doesn’t move. He considers that he’s lost his mind. He pushes the thought aside.

A snout presses against his chest, gentle enough to surprise him; Felix sucks in a breath expecting a flash of teeth and pain, but all he can feel is the soft warmth of Dimitri’s exhalations against his heartbeat.

His heart beats faster. He knows Dimitri can feel it, and he doesn’t like that.

Dimitri whines softly, his shoulders trembling, and Felix — should be scared, should be _disgusted,_ but he pities this pathetic almost-man. Against his better judgment, he reaches out to place his hand on the creature’s head, palm settling on the fur between his ears. The beast’s hackles fall, and slowly, hesitantly, Dimitri lays his head across Felix’s lap.

It’s very warm.

Felix can smell dried blood on his pelt.

Gritting his teeth, he forces his shoulders to relax and the fingers tangled in fur to cease trembling.

Dimitri is a man inflicted by a terrible curse. Whether his transformation is a direct effect of his Blaiddyd blood or not, Felix isn’t sure. (Of course he’s not sure — how could he ever ask?) What he does know for sure is that this man, this _monster,_ had wrought so much injury and blood and destruction on so many people, _countless_ people. Each day his madness grows; each day the hunt continues.

Felix awaits, and fears, and _prays for_ — the day the beast will hunt him too.


End file.
